Video:

Physical service, online purchase

Author

Nigel Palmer: "I myself am passionate about bikes and I’ve been recently actually looking at some independent bike shops, there’s two and a half thousand in the UK. There’s the big players, everybody knows sort of the lower to medium end of Halfords, but then there’s this big online player who started in a warehouse in North Belfast, called Chain Reaction and they’re really been killing the smaller retailers. But now they, as that big online retailer realise they need presence. And I suppose if people have been looking at those online retailers and saying, “How can we encourage those people to come in” could we have got them as a retailer sort of early on? Equally, there’s a shop in New York that says now, “I can’t sell bikes, yeah, because all the online people, you know, customers come in and they say, let’s have your best price because I can get this on the internet and this is the price of it and will you match it.” And they said, “No, we won’t. Buy it on the internet, come in, we’ll make it up for you and we’ll do you a service plan.” Because actually now they’re making more money out of servicing the bikes and selling the accessories with a higher margin than they are by actually selling the bikes. And you know that whole servicing element is a place where people can go."

Nigel Palmer: "I myself am passionate about bikes and I’ve been recently actually looking at some independent bike shops, there’s two and a half thousand in the UK. There’s the big players, everybody knows sort of the lower to medium end of Halfords, but then there’s this big online player who started in a warehouse in North Belfast, called Chain Reaction and they’re really been killing the smaller retailers. But now they, as that big online retailer realise they need presence. And I suppose if people have been looking at those online retailers and saying, “How can we encourage those people to come in” could we have got them as a retailer sort of early on? Equally, there’s a shop in New York that says now, “I can’t sell bikes, yeah, because all the online people, you know, customers come in and they say, let’s have your best price because I can get this on the internet and this is the price of it and will you match it.” And they said, “No, we won’t. Buy it on the internet, come in, we’ll make it up for you and we’ll do you a service plan.” Because actually now they’re making more money out of servicing the bikes and selling the accessories with a higher margin than they are by actually selling the bikes. And you know that whole servicing element is a place where people can go."

Digital engagement not just a buzz word

Digital engagement gives businesses a fantastic way to connect with customers and build their business, as Don Peppers explains in this TV show.

Digital engagement: Who do consumers trust?

If a business wants a home in the future, they have to have their own collection of friends who wish them well, of customers who want them to succeed, of customers who want the best for the brand because it's also the best for them. I think a lot of businesses think of engagement as sort of the marketing buzz word du jour. But it's not a buzz word. it encapsulates a very, very important real thing, that businesses today have more capability to actually participate in interactions and conversations and relationships with individual customers, one customer at a time, then they've ever had before.
Keep an eye on Connected Economy TV if you are interested in digital engagement. There will be more expert discussion and industry success stories.

What can social networking do for start-ups? Business development tips from Louis Gray

Communication strategy for start-ups

Communication strategy should start with a blog and expand on Twitter and Facebook according to Louis Gray, who gives his business development tips in this TV show.

Communication strategy and social networking

Companies getting started in this type of environment where the economics are difficult can actually leverage this type of weakness to look bigger than they are. One of the best things about social media is that people don't know the person behind the activity all the time. And so you have the tendency, if you do things right, to look like you're big, look like you're engaged, and get the word out. Social media is very cost effective. Somebody who can actively work social media can save tremendous amount of dollars versus traditional advertising. As a startup, your product is going to sell itself through differentiation. If you get bought in people who will communicate with you.
So as companies, be they startups or established, get started in social media, the first thing they want to do is have a central location where people can find out as much as they can about the company. Typically that's a blog. A blog can enable personal one-to-one communication from the highest levels within the company. After that, it really makes sense to get onto Twitter and Facebook and these other networks to hear what's being said, both about you and the industry. But without that blog, there's nowhere to go. So you make sure you have that blog, and then build out the social media ecosystem underneath that, which may include the other networks.
Keep an eye on Connected Economy TV for more discussion on communication strategy and social media.

Access to data comes with responsibility

Businesses have access to data from more and more individuals who are entering email addresses and phone numbers in to online forms. In this TV show Gerald Lawless explains why respecting individuals information is paramount.

Access to data in hospitality

In the hotel business we really have to understand our responsibility to our guests to maintain the confidentiality of that data. And this is something that is so abused around the world. I mean we all receive these silly phone calls and you wonder how people got your mobile number, apart from me putting it on my business card, which always doesn’t help. But it is important that we treat that with great respect, with great care. And yes, use it but use it in a way that doesn’t annoy the guest, and this is important. So we write and say, “Do you want to communicate with us?” If they don’t want to, well then that’s fine and we respect very much the confidentiality of the guest data that we hold.
Connected Economy TV will continue to follow discussions around access to data and data usage.

Digital engagement allows companies to work with customers

Digital engagement is a big opportunity for companies to gain customer confidence. In this TV show Stan Rapp says smart companies have moved beyond “doing to” their customers.

Digital engagement: Strategy is crucial

We now have the opportunity to do so much more activity on Facebook, on Youtube, on Flickr, and so on. How we do it, what we do with the ability to do, is critically important. Unfortunately, there's been a past heritage of doing to the consumer. What I mean by doing to is in the old days you bombarded the consumer with your brand message until it penetrates, and now you change that consumer's behavior. I'm going to take that consumer and press them, and turn them in my direction. That's a doing to thing. Also, we do things to our customers to help us make more money in the short term. A good example, of course, is the financial industry, and banks, with the fees that they've laid on-- with the airlines, with the baggage fee, and somebody said a airline in the UK is going to charge to use the toilet next. I doubt it, but who knows what they'll think of? Of course, the frustration with travel is so intense, not only for the passengers, but for the crew, as well. We saw what happened recently in the media, about a terrible explosion of that temper, but everyone understood it. I think what was most striking about the steward evacuating and denouncing the passenger was that nobody was surprised, because the airlines have been doing so much to the passengers and to their employees by pushing them and demanding more. I remember when the airline stewardess was something to look forward to on the plane, because she looked after you. Now, she's the garbage collector. They've done something to their employees and something to their passengers. That's the doing to thing. If we're going to get involved and engaged, it's what we do with and what we do for that's important, because when now can do things with our customers, because we know who they are. They come to us either at our website, or they come to us on Facebook. They come to us because they start with a certain degree of confidence in us, and sympatico with the product.
Connected Economy TV will continue to look at digital engagement and its effect on business.

Disruptive technology in hotel booking

Our clients have become even more dependent on their own internal systems as to how they book, how they get their own internal customers to book, they're forcing them to compliance intranets.
They're utilising systems like ours to interface with those so they become external booking agents. So in our case we have a guest portal, that that client now with all of their SLAs are completely loaded on to that portal that is specific to that company.
So actually they don't have to go to the travel department. If you are relocating it will tell you what your allowances are, it will tell you who to contact, it will have internal confirmations on.
You get your confirmation back though that portal. It eliminates complete interfaces in many cases, with their own internal travel department, which has reduced obviously labour.
Efficiency and accuracy has improved, thats a big dramatic change for many companies.
If you found this TV show about disruptive technology and hotel booking systems, please browse more interviews on Connected Economy TV.

Social media usage requires certainty

Social media usage should require a degree of care. In this TV show Jo Malone reminds us that messages are there forever.

Social media usage: Immediacy

Digital has changed everything, from communication, you can communicate the message in a second, you can go global in a second.
You can be very positive in a second.
But you also can go downhill very, very quickly.
So you have to be prepared for that. And also it’s public, so when you put something of interest on Twitter or Facebook, it’s public, it’s there forever. So make sure you really mean that.
If you found this TV show about social media usage, please browse more TV shows on Connected Economy TV where there is much more expert business insight.

Business growth show: Enabling humans

In this business growth show Bruce Dickinson discusses how he has developed his aviation business around the principle that business should cater to the consumers, who are just human beings with wants.

Business growth show: Consumer desire

When you cut human beings down to size we are really quite simple creatures you know; food, shelter, warmth, light, heat, and you build it up form there really until you finally sort of go "Gucci shoes" or whatever your consumer desires are.
But all of those desires are ultimately about gratification.
Now where we're at with the airline thing lives upon the fact that people want to travel.
We exist because people want to travel on airliners, because they want to get from A to B quickly because they don't want to spend time they perceive as wasting time just getting there.
They want to get there and live their lives to the full because they want to enjoy it.
Our job is to facilitate that happening by providing the engineering services and also possibly the transportation service that enable that to happen.
But always bear in mind that you are just enabling human beings, That is your ultimate customer.

If you found this business growth show interesting, please browse more TV shows on Connected Economy TV where there is more business insights from leaders and experts.

Digital channels should be exploited

Digital channels can be used to a businesses advantage. Simon Vincent discusses online communication in the hotel sector.

Embracing new digital channels

You have to embrace the technological advances.
I think as a whole the hotel sector has been relatively slow to adopt the online platforms.
But I think they're growing immeasurably and I think you have got to embrace and you've got to exploit and we are working both with third party partners and very hard on our own technological developments.
We embrace new channels, we are working very hard on things like Facebook and Twitter and all the new social media.
That is the way of life now and hotel companies have got to embrace that, that's how consumers of the future want to communicate and be communicated with.
So we're embracing it, we are investing in it and if you ignore it you ignore it at your peril.

If you found this video about embracing digital channels interesting , why not watch more TV shows on the Connected Economy Channel

Digital engagement creates information at the edge

Increased digital engagement is creating more data, which can be very useful for marketing as David Moschella discusses in this TV show.

Digital engagement is more powerful that marketing messages

Well increasingly the information at the edge, in our view the information created by customers prospects, the community at large, is the single most influential part of the buying process in a lot of firms.
And many of us won’t buy anything or stay in a hotel until we know what trip advisor or Amazon and others are saying. And that content comes from customers and their rating system.
So community content and that information that comes from the marketplace is far more powerful than say the marketing messages that your own firm can put out there in most business we work with.

If you are interested in issues around digital engagement bookmark Connected Economy TV video and keep an eye out for more videos.

Business risk as technology creates more stakeholders

The uncontrollable decisions of customers and shareholders are a business risk. Sir Nigel Knowles discusses the importance of keeping good communication with an increased number of stakeholders.

Business Risk: Technology creating more stakeholders in companies

People now need to be far more prepared to communicate and in a transparent way in terms of their actions. Also we've got the interesting fact that someone might say something in one country, but it might be picked up in another country and interpreted very differently, giving the person making the statement a trust issues.
So life isn't actually going to be the same again. 10-15 years ago people might have described a corporate's stakeholders as being only the share-holders, but now stake-holders of a company are their suppliers, their employees, their customers, NGOs, regulators, the press and the government.
And a leader of the corporate has got to stand up and say how he or she intends to move the company along and then account to all the various stakeholders six months later, 12 months later and say how they got along, what happened.
They must account for any shortcoming, so trust and confidence go hand in hand and are now real important features of our life.
I think it is also understood that an individual can gain trust, and quite often a faceless corporation can lose trust.
But trust is an essential part of commercial life and actually if people trust each other and can make quick decisions and move things along very efficiently, trust can be a source of competitive advantage.

For more discussion on the business risk arising in the connected economy keep watching Connected Economy TV

Many companies want to be engaged content marketing, but they are really producing the same old “thought leadership” pieces where they tell stories about their own products. The 2017 Brilliant Minds Lord’s Showcase in London shows how to create truly strategic content marketing. Location: The Long Room, Lord’s Cricket, Ground Central London The 2017

As the convergence of TV and digital continues, Google now claims YouTube advertising effectiveness is greater than TV. Matt Brittin, Google’s top-ranking European executive, is set to unveil a report analysing ad campaigns across eight countries that show in 80% of cases YouTube ads were

The rise of Bernie Sanders, seemingly from nowhere came as no surprise to us at yBC.tv. In our video about Next Gen Consumerization, our friends at the Leading Edge Forum made a number of predictions about how technology is changing the world. And in relation